Racial-biological Thinking: The World Holocaust

“Holocaust,” from the Greek words “holos” (whole) and “kaustos” (burned), was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning. The Nazis took their ideas from the racial-biological thinking of the time. This was the belief that humanity is divided into different races. Some races are better while some are worse. Each race passed on their characteristics genetically. The Nazis also believed in society and were convinced that the races were in conflict and that only the fittest would survive. Therefore, they had to protect themselves from racial outsiders, such as Jews, and purge weak members who had genetic illnesses or weaknesses. Such ideas were common in many countries, but it was only in Nazi Germany that a group of fervent believers in the racial-biological principle ever took power in a modern state. Then once in power, they used bureaucracy and government agencies to create a 'racial state'.

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany persecuted and killed vast numbers of people who did not conform to its ideas of racial and biological 'purity'. The holocaust, also known as the Shoah.

Nanking Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, refers to six weeks of mass murder and mass rape committed by Imperial Japanese troops against the residents of Nanking during the Second Sino-Japanese War, following the Nanking captured on December 9, 1937. The horror began on December 13, 1937. Soldiers went through the streets and indiscriminately killed Chinese men, women, and children without provocation or excuse. During this period, over 300,000 Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants were murdered. Even today, the horrific events of the past cast a shadow over ties between Japan and China and it continues to hold a deep resonance in the hearts of people across China.

These two genocides are two of the greatest mass murders of the twentieth century. However, both have been denied from the day they happened, and remain to be denied today no matter how large the amount of evidence shows that they did occur.

The first stage of Holocaust denial started before World War Two ended. After the Nazis realized that they would lose the war, they left Germany and went to several countries, including Sweden, Arab states, and some South American countries. There, the Nazis began to rewrite the history, then the Holocaust denial material first came up immediately after the war. Within a few years, the denial became stronger and the first Holocaust deniers used arguments and voices from historians, extremist politicians, and journalists to deny the Holocaust. It is similar to what the Japanese did to deny the Nanking Massacre by referencing their politicians and journalists.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the denial movement of the Holocaust became much more popular and spread into the mainstream, especially in Germany. Mark Weber and David Irving are two of the leading figures at that time. The holocaust denial aggregates based on particular idolatry relating to German, often including Nazi Germany and even Hitler. Deniers tried to build on those “fascinations” and remake the history of the Nazis into a positive one. Later, the Holocaust denial was no longer a practice of fringe groups and ultraconservatives, but gradually spread and was accepted by the academic circles. People denied that the Nazis ever used gas chambers to kill Jews in Poland during World War Two. Deniers were there to question the number of six million. This denial also goes against the means, such as if the gas chambers, crematoria, and even the medical experiments ever existed.

Nanking was captured on December 9, 1937, followed by six weeks of torture, mass murder, and violet rapes of Chinese non-combatants by Japanese soldiers. Many witnesses and evidence were documenting the situations in Nanking in those six weeks. There was no exact number of Chinese killed by the Japanese just as there was no exact number of Jews killed by the Nazis. Although most historians, politicians, and journalists point out the average number is 260,000, deniers put the number much lower at around 3,000. Similar to the Holocaust, it started to deny during the massacre and continues nowadays.

Japan also launched a significant propaganda war attempting to alleviate the blame from them. Instead of punishing or criticizing their troops, the Japanese leaders decided to use propaganda as an approach to hide their actions. Throughout the time between the end of the war and the 1950s, the ministry of education in Japan demanded that textbooks should avoid the tough criticism of Japan's role in the Pacific War. Also, the government saw any descriptions of Japan invading China as inappropriate. This textbook distortion lasts for about 20 years with the Nanking Massacre unilateral disappeared in Japan. Even after the 1980s, textbooks were still under scrutiny, and governments once again tried to tone down the wording of the textbooks. Those textbooks used in Japan were highly censored and were denying the Nanking Massacre. Only until 1997, the truth was told. Although it remarked an incredible leap forward for Japan, there still existed a relative amount of people denying the Nanking Massacre.

As seen, denial is a part of the history of genocides. The Holocaust is mostly denied by the anti-Semitists, whereas the Nanking Massacre is mostly denied by the Japanese governments and politicians. Similarly, deniers from both countries tried to legitimize their historical actions and saw those movements and choices from a positive perspective. One day, there will be no survivors of the Holocaust or the Nanking Massacre. However even if both atrocities are being denied, the hurt will exist anyway through generations.

Between 1933 and 1945, victims of the Holocaust are not just the Jewish people, but also Gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, and the catholic church. People were killed by machine guns, starvations, gas chambers, and even medical human experiments. Concentration camps were established and used to hold a huge amount of people in terrible living conditions. Auschwitz was one of the biggest camps by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War Two and the Holocaust. Prisoners in the concentration camp were treated badly by sadism, beating, torturing, and execution.

I can still recall those personal private stories about survivors’ tragic lives in the Neue Synagogue Berlin and have deep empathy with them. Everybody has a dark side, but because we are civilized, we push it down. There are interviews about three Holocaust survivors on the internet talking about their lives nowadays. One of the interviewers, Dasha 88, was sent to a concentration camp when she was 13. She said the love for her mother is progressively increasing and becoming so strong, but she never saw her mother again. Six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. One in six were killed at Auschwitz and Dasha’s parents and four of her siblings, along with their children, were murdered at Auschwitz. Aliza 74, was hidden in an underground bunker as a baby, cared for by strangers. When she had her first child, she had nightmares about people coming and taking her child away. From their sad and desperate faces, almost crying, I can see how the dark and horrible shadows of the Holocaust left on them for the rest lives

As for the Nanking Massacre, the victims were Chinese civilians. About 20,000 women were raped in 6 weeks and overall approximately 300,000 people were killed through decapitation, shooting, drowning, burning, castration, and punching. Xia Shuqin, one of the Nanking Massacre survivors said three generations of her family were killed by the Japanese soldiers in a very short period of time. This tragedy changed her life and stole her innocence. When the survivors look back on the horror of the massacre today, they all show great psychic trauma.

Both genocides are morbid and cruel but in terms of the methods and purposes of killing, the Holocaust is much worse than the Nanking Massacre. The Nazis took many measures to discriminate against the Jews, accusing Jews of being the cause of the economic crisis and the loss of World War One. Hitler and the Nazis saw the world as a struggle between the human races. Therefore, Hitler aimed to remove all the Jews which was considered an ultimate goal. They wanted to exterminate the Jews. The Holocaust was a planned, brutal, industrialized murder made by the governments and the Nazi regime. Whereas the Nanking Massacre is considered to be an orgy of atrocities to some extent it was an unplanned spontaneous action by the soldiers instead as the Japanese never wanted to eliminate all Chinese.

The Holocaust is the worst thing that human beings are capable of, but it is also an example of the best of a human being as well. It shows how people rescued, people helped, people never gave up the courage of fighting back, and the dignity people trying to maintain. Whenever something really horrible happens, people need to find ways to move through it. But first of all, people have to acknowledge and understand it. Only after people acknowledge it, then we can learn the history and let the tragedy never happen again. We can live with dignity and we cannot die without it.